your secret admirer
by fittedhatsandacaralarm
Summary: she wishes he could have signed his name instead of the silly cliche of 'your secret admirer'. / theodoreparvati oneshot.


_one. _

Parvati gets her first letter in the winter of her third year, stuck casually between the frame and the painting of the Fat Lady, her name written in elegant script on the yellowed envelope. She reads the letter aloud to Hermione and Lavender, swooning at the flowery words and romantic edge of the letter. _I gaze from afar, my beautiful Gryffindor. Your beauty matches none other encased inside this fortress of stone and schoolwork. If only we could be together._

She wishes, as moonlight streams into the girls' dormitory, illuminating the spacious bedroom, and as she clutches the crumpled parchment to her chest, he could have signed his name instead of the silly cliché of _Your secret admirer._

_two. _

She begins to lose hope when she doesn't get any more letters, but then, just before term ends, another coffee-stained envelope is there, and the Fat Lady seems more agitated than usual.

"I've been ordered to watch those for you, girl," she says loudly and gestures to a beautifully crafted bouquet of silk roses lain on the stone floor just below the painting. _(They almost match the ones the Fat Lady has in her hair and nobody but Lavender knows how much she admires those delicate, painted pink roses.)_ Parvati picks them up, touches them, her soft fingertips barely skimming over the soft flowers.

_I'm sorry I haven't written lately, love. The roses are sent as an apology._

_ Your secret admirer._

That is not quite the shortest letter Parvati receives from her mysterious correspondent.

_three. _

She's filing her nails a few days before the Yule Ball in the library when a timid Hufflepuff first year boy approaches her, an envelope stuck in his back pocket. He shyly explains that his 'boss' couldn't deliver the letter to the common room, and had requested he bring it to her instead.

She feels guilt welling up in her stomach for going to the Ball with Harry as her chocolaty brown eyes scan the elegant script, drinking in the words. How could she?

_four. _

Parvati decides to write her admirer back the night after the Yule Ball, her shoes and dress lying innocently on the floor, while she sits on her four-poster bed, wrapped up in the soft blankets of the dormitories. She's just finished writing out the letter when she realizes she hasn't got any idea how to get it to him. How could she be so stupid? If she left it by the painting, it would surely fall into the wrong hands. Oh, why did things have to be so frustrating for her?

She throws the letter away, and runs down to the girls' lavatory the next morning, scrubbing furiously at the ink stains on her dark, soft hands. It's a long while before she realizes she's crying, and she doesn't even know why.

_five. _

She doesn't like the way that dirty Theodore Nott keeps staring at her, during breakfast when the owl post comes, during dinner, between classes. He's rather revolting, actually. And a Slytherin, too! It doesn't even cross her mind that he could possibly be her secret admirer. And even if it had—crossed her mind, that is—it surely couldn't be true? Nonetheless, he's staring at her from across the Great Hall while she's eating her dessert—flan, that stormy, eerie Monday night—and she hates it.

_six._

Parvati doesn't remember exactly the next time she gets a letter. It's sometime in her fifth year, she thinks. Yes, her fifth year, because she remembers being too busy to spend too much time to care. She was just so occupied with DA, and that horrid Umbridge, that she simply forgot about her precious secret admirer. But he hadn't forgotten about her, no, no, no.

_Things are so difficult, love. It's getting harder and harder for us to ever have a chance of being together. Forgive me if I stop writing. It's not you, darling, it's me._

Parvati cries that entire night, curled up in front of the blazing fire of the Gryffindor common room. He'd given her hope, hope for a better tomorrow, because how could a love like the one he had had for her since third year exist in such dark times without _hope_?

_seven._

It's strange, because in her sixth year, she gets regular letters. Every week, tucked under her pillow. His handwriting has changed slightly. Wobbly. Not quite right. But she's content with them, because it gives her hope again, and when it seems like there are Death Eaters just outside the school gates, she really needs hope.

She doesn't understand what's really been going on the entire year until she walks in on Lavender writing her a letter after dinner one night, one of the old ones that were actually from _him _in front of her. Parvati's jaw drops and her dark, mascaraed eyes fill with tears, because it's been a lie. The entire year was a lie, and it hurts.

"I hate you, Lavender Brown!"

She regrets it most when she can't possibly apologize for it anymore.

_eight._

It's over.

It's really, truly, completely over.

Voldemort is gone.

But so are the letters she's become accustomed to not receiving. But it's quite alright. They've been gone much longer than Voldemort has been.

Parvati is walking around the dirty, half-destroyed Great Hall with Professor Trewlaney, looking at who've they'd lost. It wasn't fair; why did so many people have to die?

She's utterly shocked when she sees Theodore Nott, a Slytherin, lying on a cot on the floor. Just by looking at him, she could tell he wasn't breathing. But, what's this? A piece of parchment is sticking out of his pocket. She'd feel wrong if she let it go unnoticed, because a lot of things were going unnoticed in the post-battle frenzy.

Sidestepping a broken stone helmet from one of the many stone soldiers McGonagall had employed in defending the school, she kneels beside him and pries the scrap of parchment out of his pocket, careful not to move his limply lifeless arm.

Parvati cries that entire night, curled up on one of the ruined couches in the ruined common room, because it was _him_, revolting, strange, Slytherin Theodore Nott. It was him the whole time, and she had realized _after_ he was gone that she had loved him as he had loved her.

_I stayed for you, love._

_Your secret admirer, Theodore._


End file.
